This is true of all ages. In younger years, a finely rounded fart in assembly is absolutely hilarious. No-one can deny this. In later years, when applying for a late licence in the magistrates' court, a similar enhancement occurs. I can promise you.

The best position to release a really noisy fart is, as any grammar schoolboy knows, sitting cross-legged in the gym, with all the reverberation that involves. To combine this with assembly is something extra-special, but to do that you really have to get someone to burn down the school hall first, which luckily a disgruntled fifth former had.

It was Mr Tillyard, the German teacher and former British spy, who was holding the assembly, recounting the tragic tale of the Polish peasant he had seen dragged from their home and beaten to death by blackshirts.

There was a poignant silence. Then, quite inadvertently, I dropped a high-volume stonker, whose echo destabilised each of the 500 schoolboys present into a silently heaving mess of suppressed giggles.

I don't think it's really fair to get detention for dropping your guts.